For a long time now I have wanted to write a tutorial about buying art
commissions from artists on the internet.

The images here are from an upcoming game about Special Forces and
Monsters!

Eventually I began working with an Artist on the Ghost Guns RPG project.

Sketches and Artist's renderings by Enmanuel Martinez, I asked Enmanuel if I
could show some of the Work In Progress stuff to give people a behind the
scenes view of the process and he agreed.

Now that we've been through the Soldiers and Monsters, lets do the scenes, I
wanted to show some of the characters fighting or at least looking for the
monsters.

So first we wanted our Close Quarters Combat specialist facing one of our
fast zombies, and since we liked it but didn't find a place to use it, I wanted
the CQB guy using the Knife and Pistol stance. Enmanuel came back with this.

From top to bottom Sketch 1 I really didn't like the open stance and despite
them being nearly identical I liked Sketch 2's Zombie more. Sketch 3 probably
had the most action and I thought maybe lets cut out the soldier so only the
knife and pistol show, give the zombie some more room to shine.

The new version of Sketch 3 is what I wanted, I approved it and Enmanuel
went back to finish the details.

The new version of Sketch 3, I kind of hated to mention it but it was going
to bug me, the pommel of the knife was weird, and I asked Enmanuel to make it
line up with the rest of the blade. He fixed it and this is the final.

Next I wanted our Riflewoman in a vulnerable "the killer is right behind
you" kind of horror pose with one of our Vampires.

Sketch 1 the Vampire was very close, but I didn't like the pose with the gun
facing down the hall, despite that being typical for clearing a corridor. I
wanted Sketch 2's pose despite the gun in the air by the heroes face being its
own cliche of a pose. Sketch 2's monster was too far away to create the amount
of tension I wanted. Sketch 3's monster had its fans among the design team, but
ultimately I wasn't sure the final creature had wall crawling physics defying
powers. Sketch 3's exposed brick wall was also a favorite.

Now the monster creates more tension, riflewoman is half turned to the
monster so she's not totally unaware, but still vulnerable. She's got her
flashlight out and she is looking down the corridor. I approve the sketch and
we move onto more detail.

Final, our heroine and monster are both doing their thing and the hallway is
about as creepy as I could have hoped for.

-All of the images were done in grayscale, none of these are done in color
or rely on color, a lot of the equipment stuff is going to be in Black and
White, likewise Guns don't always need color to show all of their details. The
Black and White motif will also accommodate some of the horror aspect of the
monsters.

I hope this helps some of you out there looking to buy pieces for yourself
or for your own RPG projects.